"Delighted with the bauble coach, and wrapped
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped,"
while the fond mother watched her darling from the "nursery window," the memory of which one pathetic poem has made immortal.
In a well-known sentence, Lord Macaulay affirms in reference to the seventeenth century, "We are not afraid to say, that though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of that century, there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of these minds produced the Paradise Lost; the other, the Pilgrim's Progress." Similarly, with regard to the brilliant literary period which began towards the close of the eighteenth century, "we are not afraid to say," that although there were many poets in England of no mean order, there were but two to whom it was given to view nature simply and sincerely, so as adequately to express "the delight of man in the works of God." One of these poets produced the Task, the other the Exclusion.
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When Macaulay wrote, the place of Bunyan in literature was still held a little doubtful; the place of Cowper among poets is not wholly unquestioned now. Some are impatient of his simplicity, others scorn his piety, many cannot escape, as they read, from the shadow of the darkness in which he wrote. But we cannot doubt that, when the coming reaction from feverishness and heathenism in poetry shall have set in, the name of Cowper will win increasing honour; men will search for themselves into the source of those bright phrases, happy allusions, "jewels five words long, that on the stretched forefinger of all time sparkle for ever," for which the world is often unconsciously indebted to his poems; while his incomparable letters will remain as the finest and most brilliant specimens of an art which penny-postage, telegrams, and post-cards have rendered almost extinct in England.
No one at any rate will wonder now that we should turn awhile from more outwardly striking or enchanting scenes to the ground made classic and sacred to the English Christian by the memories of Bunyan and Cowper. We may associate their names, not only from their brotherhood in faith and teaching, but from the coincidence which identifies their respective homes with one and the same river, and blends their memories with the fair still landscapes through which it steals.